[Schadenfreude]

I guess I haven't seen too many truly bizarre things. But...

When I was a kid of about 10, My mom was driving me to a piano lesson. We had to drive through a section of farmland along a two-laner with steep embankments and cow fields an either side. A half-mile or so stretch of this was straight, no curves.

Just as we entered this straight piece of embanked road, we both noticed in the distance a Chevy Van caroming from one side to the other, over and over agan. It was careening toward us and it did not appear to losing any momentum.

My mom pulled over to the side and I said, "Mom, that van's going to plow right into us! We should get out and crawl up the embankment!". Then I started yelling, "Mom, turn around and get out of here! That van's gonna hit us!".

But my mom yelled at me to be quiet and to stay put. She basically froze into position behind the wheel, hands at ten and two. We both seemed to freeze into trance at the spectacle of the van bouncing back and forth, it's engine roaring, tearing up the weeds where it hit and showering dirt all over the road in little explosions. It was like an enraged headless monster in it's death throes. I remember thinking that there must not be a driver behind the wheel and couldn't understand how the thing kept going.

My mom just sat there staring at it. She kept yelling at me to shut up. I can't remember exactly but I think I was still yelling that we should save ourselves. I was getting ready to bail on my stupid mom but, at ten, I was still very obedient to her and my mom was a damn stern woman to cross.

The careening van had soon nearly reached us and it actually got to the point where one more carom would have smacked it into our old Chevy Blazer. I remember thinking it would hit my mom's side. But instead, it smacked square into a telephone pole on the embankment opposite. And we both saw a mass fly out of the windshield, describing an arc over the embankment. It flew over the weeds and the barbed-wire fence on top too.

That van had had plenty of forward speed. It had hit the pole and rebounded backwards and away from us to reveal a perfect indentation of the telephone pole in its front. I watched it, amazed, as it sat there still, ticking and steaming.

I must have still been yelling "Holy Shit!" or something because my mom was screaming at me to shut up again. Just as she got out of our truck to investigate, a bloody and hysterical, barefoot young redneck woman seemed to emerge right out of the weeds. She was screaming about her purse. My mom slapped her hard across the face which instantly made her quiet, at least for a second. My mom said, "That van is dangerous and might catch fire! Sit here!", and my mom forced the girl to sit in the drivers seat of our blazer next to me. She was badly scratched, cut and bloody, raving out of her mind - and she had landed in some fresh cow crap too after being flung out of the vehicle. The strong smell of cowshit in our truck seemed to be the most confusing part of her sudden hysterical presence beside me.

It's funny. I can't clearly remember anything after that. I think we waited around until the police came, which must have been quite a few minutes. I think my mom retrieved the girl's purse for her.

At any rate, it was a weird spectacle. That van must have bounced back and forth between embankments about ten times or so. It could have ended badly for us if that pole had not stopped it. So while my mom took charge of things after the van hit, she was a fool for staying in place watching it carom back and forth like that and coming ever closer without taking any evasive action.

I seem to recall a newspaper article about the event and my mom commenting on it. I think she was later thanked by the family of that girl who had been helpless behind the wheel. They were convinced that someone had rigged the van to lose its steering and to accelerate to high speed. This was all very interesting to my young mind but it seemed that whenever I tried to find out more about why the girl's family suspected diabolical shenanigans, someone would just tell me to shut up.

I never did quite get the real story of how that van came to do what it did. And of all the dumb-ass, idiotic, endlessly-repeated bits of useless trivia that my mother continues to remind us about, the incident of the caroming Chevy Van in rural Germantown, MD circa 1969 elicits nary a peep from her. And that's puzzling too. You'd think she would have built up a real tall hero-tale about that one by now.

[PenultimateManStanding]

I'm not really sure I actually saw the most bizarre thing I ever saw. I was just a little boy at the time. It was in a cave at the top of a granite hill. There was some kind of slimy intestinal creature deep in the cave. I remember years later looking into that cave and seeing nothing there.

[Grifter]

I was locked in my parents cellar by two of my mates, I was ok for a bit until I noticed a dim glow comming from the corner.

I freaked out, ran to the door and simply opened it! When we all looked the doorlock was still in the locked position and the latch wasn't broken. We unlocked, closed and locked the door again but we could not repeat the weird experience.

Also, me and my best friend saw a ghost (I don't know what else to call it) in the same house. It just drifted past us from the hallway to the stairs.

I also heard flutes at about 3 o'clock in the morning in the same house. My girlfriend of the time was with me and could hear it too.

[crossthread]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('FreakOil', 'W')hen I was a boy, my friend and I were hunting for crayfish in the creek behind my house. I lifted up a rock and saw the biggest goddamned crayfish that ever was and ever will be. It was the size of a small lobster, unnaturally large. My friend was standing right beside me, and he saw it too.

But lifting up that rock stirred up a cloud of mud, which passed downstream over the crayfish. When the creek finally cleared, the crayfish was gone. But I swear on my left testicle, that was the biggest goddamned crayfish that ever was and ever will be.

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('golem', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', ' ')
Anyone been to India? Seen any magic carpets or anything like that?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('golem', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'I')'m not really sure I actually saw the most bizarre thing I ever saw. I was just a little boy at the time. It was in a cave at the top of a granite hill. There was some kind of slimy intestinal creature deep in the cave. I remember years later looking into that cave and seeing nothing there.

[jdumars]

Well... I have had some very unusual and unexplainable experiences. Here are just a few.

Several years ago, I started a band with a bass player and drummer and we were relaxing after rehearsal. I didn't know the bass player very well yet. He wanted to check his e-mail on my computer. Without even thinking (I was sitting at the computer), I logged into Yahoo mail with his user name and password -- which he did not tell me, nor did I know prior to that. Also, his password was NOT intuitive, had nothing to do with music, bass or anything that I would know. I had never seen him type it either. It freaked him and I both out pretty good.

At my last job, I was in a meeting with some execs at the company. And, halfway through the meeting I had a very intense vision of being at a lake, and other various very detailed things. One of the people in the vision was a younger version of one of the execs. After the meeting, I asked her, "hey did you happen to grow up near a lake somewhere in the Northeast? Maybe Upstate New York?" She hesitated, and said "yes, why?" Well, I told her I had this odd daydream about it. I described it in more and more detail, and it was exact detail from when she was young, down to the most minute things, including losing a bracelet in the water off the small dock. Again, both parties confused and a little freaked out.

When I was young I snuck out of my room one night to go play hide and seek with my friends. My mom had already gone to bed. While we were playing, I stopped and told my friend "I have to go home now... my mom just woke up and is wondering where I am." Sure enough, she just woke up and was wondering where I was.

I was struck by lightening once in a car on the way to the airport. It removed almost all of the oxygen in the car.

In high school, I was with a friend hanging out and had a strong vision of her in a very colorful and odd-looking dress. I asked her if she had been doing some folk dancing recently, and much to both of our amazement, she said yes. I described her dress perfectly. I didn't know anything about that before that moment. Commence freak out.

I could go on and on. I also fix things by being in proximity to them -- so much so that it's what I do for a living. I also have musical instrument radar, so I can go into an antique store and find old instruments. I also have "cop radar" so that I know when police are around even if I can't see them. I can also unscramble common words instantly. I can do the entire jumble in the Sunday paper in less than a half second. I have visual-auditory synesthesia -- such that moving objects (especially things like animated gifs) have a "sound."

Are these the sorts of things you were looking for?

[eastbay]

Golem, that was downright funny! I was thinking the same response would be appropriate for J's obscene tale.

I have quite a few really crazy work stories, but you said you don't want to hear about them so I won't share them here.

Oh, the two UFO's we saw late last August and mentioned here. No way anything made by humans could move like they did.

We were all quite impressed. But maybe you had to actually see them to understand how truly odd it was.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('golem', '
')Yes I miss NEOPO too...he was my painkiller, he helped me let go of my pain, he stood between me and my monthly cramps...called PMS.

[eastbay]

Here we go....

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'H')ere we go....

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'H')ere we go....

[smallpoxgirl]

My weirdest sight ever...I was a street medic for the "protest" (really more of a riot) in Quebec City in April 2001. About 16 hours into the thing, I'm beat. I've been in a gas mask for 16 hours. I'm hungry and dehydrated. I'm half blind because I can't wear my glasses under my gas mask. Two of my four teammates got overcome by gas and went home hours ago. It's gotten dark, and consequently cold. At this point all of the out of town protesters have gone home and it's entirely French-speaking locals drinking wine and throwing their bottles at the cops. Up wanders this girl dressed like a pixie with a huge bowl of sour gummy worms. I was like "What the!?!?! Never mind!" Took about two seconds for me to rip off my helmet, gas mask, etc and grab a handful. Tear gas be damned, it was calories. A short time later a cabbie pulled his taxi up to the crowd and started honking along with the chant "So, so, so...solidarite". Definitely the most bizarre experience of my life.

[gnm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'U')p wanders this girl dressed like a pixie with a huge bowl of sour gummy worms. I was like "What the!?!?! Never mind!" Took about two seconds for me to rip off my helmet, gas mask, etc and grab a handful.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('gnm', 'Y')ou're lucky she hadn't dusted em with "pixie dust"...

-G

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')Don't screw up my Bizarre Thing thread. Go over to the Any Blacks thread if you want to fight.

[BigTex]

I was in New Orleans in the French Quarter one time and saw a police horse bite a drunk pedestrian (no, it wasn't me).

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')Don't screw up my Bizarre Thing thread. Go over to the Any Blacks thread if you want to fight.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdumars', 'W')ell... I have had some very unusual and unexplainable experiences. Here are just a few.

Several years ago, I started a band with a bass player and drummer and we were relaxing after rehearsal. I didn't know the bass player very well yet. He wanted to check his e-mail on my computer. Without even thinking (I was sitting at the computer), I logged into Yahoo mail with his user name and password -- which he did not tell me, nor did I know prior to that. Also, his password was NOT intuitive, had nothing to do with music, bass or anything that I would know. I had never seen him type it either. It freaked him and I both out pretty good.

At my last job, I was in a meeting with some execs at the company. And, halfway through the meeting I had a very intense vision of being at a lake, and other various very detailed things. One of the people in the vision was a younger version of one of the execs. After the meeting, I asked her, "hey did you happen to grow up near a lake somewhere in the Northeast? Maybe Upstate New York?" She hesitated, and said "yes, why?" Well, I told her I had this odd daydream about it. I described it in more and more detail, and it was exact detail from when she was young, down to the most minute things, including losing a bracelet in the water off the small dock. Again, both parties confused and a little freaked out.

When I was young I snuck out of my room one night to go play hide and seek with my friends. My mom had already gone to bed. While we were playing, I stopped and told my friend "I have to go home now... my mom just woke up and is wondering where I am." Sure enough, she just woke up and was wondering where I was.

I was struck by lightening once in a car on the way to the airport. It removed almost all of the oxygen in the car.

In high school, I was with a friend hanging out and had a strong vision of her in a very colorful and odd-looking dress. I asked her if she had been doing some folk dancing recently, and much to both of our amazement, she said yes. I described her dress perfectly. I didn't know anything about that before that moment. Commence freak out.

I could go on and on. I also fix things by being in proximity to them -- so much so that it's what I do for a living. I also have musical instrument radar, so I can go into an antique store and find old instruments. I also have "cop radar" so that I know when police are around even if I can't see them. I can also unscramble common words instantly. I can do the entire jumble in the Sunday paper in less than a half second. I have visual-auditory synesthesia -- such that moving objects (especially things like animated gifs) have a "sound."

Are these the sorts of things you were looking for?

[jboogy]

2 things I experienced and 2 things I heard from very believable people, Me and my BFF were on the phone years ago blabbing about nothing for a while, when we're about ready to wrap it up he asks me if I was doin anything during the conversation, I says yeah, doodlin', turns out so was he and it was freaky when we found out we'd both been drawin fish , sharks and whales,

sixth grade lunch this kid is holdin' his breath trying to make his face turn red, his face turns super red and then something gives out and about a triple-shot of the nastiest green snot in the world jets out of his nose onto the table

when young my buddy and three of his siblings saw a moving, talking clowns head in a bush, i kinda grew up with this family and even now when they're all in their 40's they all swear they saw it and their stories about it have never changed over the years

my wife and her BFF were cruising the back roads of bucks county PA. when they were in their early twenties around midnight or later when they saw a very short "being" (midget size) , wearing a black cape and a silver helmet of some kind , come out of the woods on one side of the road, cross the road in front of them, and enter woods on the other side of the road, my wife is not and has never been prone to exaggeration, imagination or attacks of the vapors as long as I've known her , she literally grins and averts your eyes if she tries to tell even a white lie, her friend Debby is one of the most sober, serious people I've ever met and she told me the same exact story, the thing that makes me believe it wasn't a short person playing games is that back then the part of bucks county they were in was all woods with almost no farms and almost no car traffic at night, if it was someone pullin' a gag they must of been crouched in the woods for a long time waiting for a car to come along.